The use of magnetic nanoparticles in thermal therapy monitoring and screening: Localization and imaging (invited)

Magnetic nanoparticles have many diagnostic and therapeutic applications. A method termed magnetic spectroscopy of nanoparticle Brownian motion (MSB) was developed to interrogate in vivo the microscopic environment surrounding magnetic nanoparticles. We can monitor several effects that are important in thermal therapy and screening including temperature measurement and the bound state distribution. Here we report on simulations of nanoparticle localization. Measuring the spatial distribution of nanoparticles would allow us to identify ovarian cancer much earlier when it is still curable or monitor thermal therapies more accurately. We demonstrate that with well-designed equipment superior signal to noise ratio (SNR) can be achieved using only two harmonics rather than using all the harmonics containing signal. Alternatively, smaller magnetic field amplitudes can be used to achieve the same SNR. The SNR is improved using fewer harmonics because the noise is limited. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3675994]